1940, 14th May, Rotterdam was destroyed by a Luftwaffe air raid. Today was the 70th anniversary. Several solemn events were held across the city centre, in symbolic places that used to be the very heart of the city that disappeared. At night, once again the ceremonies were closed with testimonials, music, poems and a light installation. All of this is quite dense, but as it ends you get the feeling. This year the light installation was somehow humble. A set of spotlights around the sculpture by Ossip Zadkine “De Verwoeste Stad” (The Destroyed City), creating a crown of light pointing at one single point just above the head of the disfigured bronze man. As the music went by that confluence point was lifted and slowly all the spotlights were pointing towards the zenith just above the sculpture. An enormous body of light that no one can touch but it’s there, sublime, volatile, just like the memory. This year’s essay on this historic event was called “a distant echo”. Somehow that was what one could hear, an echo of something gone away, that you barely notice. Going around the city, looking towards those rays of light, what you could see was silence, an enormous silence on a dark starry sky. But that silence, if you want to, is full of groans and roars. That’s what this land was left with that day. And that is overwhelming. And that is the way it must be.

On my way back home, the city centre was crowded. Cars were speeding along the streets. Girls seemed lost and a boy prompted to help. Flocks of youngsters were rushing across the pavements, talking loudly. Blinking lights everywhere like fires burning in the air. All that people set in emergency mode. But there is no emergency, that’s just the way we rush from a point to no point. The cars were probably going nowhere important, speeding for any reason at all. The girls just wanted to know where some party was and the boy only helped them because they were dressing nastily. The flocks of youngsters were in a hurry because they wanted to go to some club before midnight so that they wouldn’t pay the entrance, and they were loudly talking trash and groaning at the girls. And the lights were blinking, as music was being pumped into the air. That’s the groove of Friday night in Rotterdam. And this is a night worth commemorating. But none of them were commemorating the fact that we actually have a city around us again. Where we go today is only there and only looks like how it looks because of that day in 1940. But man, a Friday night party is just a Friday night party. And all the emergency is just the same flow as in any other Friday night, repeated ad nauseam, for the simple purpose of no purpose. And that’s the way it is.

I couldn’t help but remember what someone once said about the cycle of generations. There was that generation that destroyed what people had taken for granted. Then there had to come a generation to create things back again. The ones that came next took advantage of what the previous had done. And I wonder if aren’t we living in the transition to the generation that will destroy everything again. The entire perfectly shaped world we have been taught that would be here forever. And there is no light installation pointing towards the zenith, evoking infinity that can prevent what eventually might be coming. Historical memory seems to be fragile. The importance of remembering is a grimace in our faces. We are the ones that don’t know what day was today, but live in Rotterdam for years and yet ask what was then bombed 70 years ago. We are the ones that say oh the statue of Zadkine, because it has the shape of a man and as it is signed by the sculptor with big letters, then it might be a representation of Zadkine himself. The destroyed city is a forgotten concept by this time. And like the echo, what some felt in flesh and bone and blood and tears cannot and probably won’t be remembered ad eaternum. And apparently that’s the way it will always be.